[EAS] EAS in the County?

[Joel Curtis - WCM at NWS Juneau]

As a Warning Coordination Meteorologist, I have been studying alert messaging the last few years. The most difficult aspect of an alert message is the "Where?" The instantaneous thought by the receiver is "Do they really mean me?". The conditions for "out-of-towners" is an order of magnitude worse. I wish that there was a simple solution to that problem. There are some devices that are more localized such as Wireless Emergency Alerts, but EAS is going to at least have a county FIPS code and SAME. That simply doesn't help when you don't know which county you are in, such as a visitor would not know. 

On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 3:43 PM Barry Mishkind <barry at oldradio.com> wrote:
>At 03:16 PM 6/4/2019, Adrienne Abbott wrote:
>>returned from a work trip to Mississippi. A tornado warning was issued while
>>she was driving back to her hotel and she was very alarmed because she
>>didn't know which county she was in and only the county was mentioned in the
>>warning. The radio station staff did not provide any additional information,
>>so she went straight back to her hotel, only to find out at work the next
>>day that the warning was not for the town where she was.
>>
>>I wonder how often this happens, that people who are visiting and aren't
>>familiar with the area, go back to their hotels when they hear these weather
>>warnings and don't know if their area is affected.

>        More often that it should. I"ve been writing for
>        years about this issue, but it seems no one
>        on any side of EAS wants to talk about this.

>        If you don't know where Manker County is,
>        how can you be safe?

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--
Joel Curtis
Warning Coordination Meteorologist
Incident Meteorologist
NWS Juneau, Alaska 
907-790-6803 (o) 907-723-2326 (c)